


Of Forgiveness and False Hope

by kadeccasinclair



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Natasha Romanov, Civil War, F/M, Natasha isn't good with feelings, but she loves Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-28
Updated: 2015-11-28
Packaged: 2018-05-03 17:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5299865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kadeccasinclair/pseuds/kadeccasinclair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Civil War Based Story</p>
<p>She saw Steve's face when he told her that she never wanted to see him again. As for forgiveness, she doesn't want to lose hope of that. SHIELD and Nick Fury is gone, Tony told her that she had gone soft and was compromised, and Steve...well he was bitter and resentful. For once in a long time, she was so bitterly alone and she wasn't about to just let that consume her.</p>
<p>Forgiveness is a weird thing, and it twists your mind in hopes of it until only one result is clear. Tragedy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Forgiveness and False Hope

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know where I'm going with this but I just so desperately need to get this out after seeing Captain America the Civil War's trailer...I'm sticking with my Romanogers :) . I don't think she could hurt him like that, but I also don't think that she's very "soft." I wanted to represent her old BAMF side because god knows that she is very much that, and this was the only way I could think of that could respect her character.

I reached for him, begging for him to just say something. Anything. I wanted him to nuzzle against my small hand the same way he had yesterday, when his whole world had started to crumble at the loss of the civilian who had died in his arms. He only flinched back before his face contorted into an expression of fury, anger, and betrayal.

“Leave! Get out of here! I don’t ever want to see your traitorous face ever again!”

Say anything but that.

I begged like I had never before, for him to understand how it had been for me. What choice did I really have? I believed in Tony’s cause, and I knew that if I could just be the mediator between both sides, I would reduce the amount of damage. Tony believed in something that I had been taught through my years, and I cared about everyone on the team more than I let on to. In my ignorant mind, that had been the best route to go. I had had the false conception that everything would pan out, that some sort of result could be made by compromise rather than the violence I was so accustomed to.

“Steve-”

“Don’t you dare call me that!” He practically roared in fury, his eyes growing wider and his hand reaching through the empty space between us before slamming me back. With no fight, I let myself collapse at the wall, my head ringing from the impact. I felt hot liquid slide down from the center of my head but I didn’t make an effort to wipe it away.

“Leave, and don’t you ever come back! You are not welcome in the presence of any of us.” I hadn’t ever seen him so enraged. Yes, I had seen him absolutely lose it after an untimely death and, yes, I had seem him frustrated when he couldn’t beat a foe, but I had never seen him like this. My partner.

I got up slowly, my body swaying as the dizziness from what was shaping up to be a pretty nasty concussion kicked in. In a voice that was so unlike me, that practically radiated the weakness I refused to show, I gently whispered the truth. The single thing I had hoped wouldn’t be the outcome of my position as mediator between the two conflicting sides.

“I don’t have anywhere to go, Steve.”

Fate was such a bitch. The second I tried to do something good, everything backfires and I lose everyone.

He turned his face back to me and, for one tiny second, I thought I saw something soften within his face. I thought that maybe he would let me explain myself, that he’d give me a shot to prove that I really wanted nothing more than to keep him safe. I could practically hear him nodding and could see him sitting on the red couch, patting the space next to him and sipping the black coffee he was so proud of.

“I never want to see, hear, or have anything to do with you ever again, you backstabbing slut.”

Or not.

Maybe it was the pain of his words, the ones that truly sunk beneath my walls and hit me with full force, but I listened. I made my way to the door without letting the three words I wanted to let slip blurt out of my mouth, and I took a last look at the beautiful building once more. All of it...turn away because of my incompetence.

And I walked away.

The moments after were a blur. I vaguely remembered walking along the alleys and somehow finding my way to a small, cramped apartment that had seen better days.

“Rule 1, Natalia, is to never be without options. Always have something, some place that you can stay in no matter how ugly it is, that no one ever knows about. If you get found out, you can always go there before contacting one of the other ground recruits.”

I guess I was back to square one, once more. Like a good child, I had listened to what that bastard Ivan had told me back in the Red Room, and I had kept one of these rooms just as a habit. No one knew of it and there was a whole undercover persona set up for the whole purpose of keeping this same safe shelter up. It was barren, and it was beyond shabby (there was almost no room for me to take more than ten steps from any direction), but it was something. No bed, no blankets, no warmth, but a roof over my head.

It wasn’t home.

Home was back in the days when the whole original Avengers team could coop out in Tony’s tower. We had the most ridiculous of movie nights, and we had the luxury of looking outside and seeing all of New York in bright lights and a shadow of ignorance. It was when all of us believed in the same cause: to save everyone we possibly could from the shadows they didn’t and couldn’t know about. It was when Steve and I were partners, scavenging the city and finding hidden coffee shops whilst on the lookout for some creep. It was when Clint and I were the Black Widow and Hawkeye, the team and best friends that were inseparable.

I couldn’t go back to Clint. For one, he was with Steve, and, for the second, she didn’t want to do that. Clint would forgive, hell, he’d probably me the second I got back to him, but it just wouldn’t be the same. Plus, Steve would kick my ass for showing up in the “presence” of any of his team members. The ones that didn’t betray him.

Tony had already deemed me as being too soft for Captain America, and too much of a liability because of it. He had questioned my beliefs, been outraged when he found that I was meeting with Steve and not reporting back intel as a spy, and had kicked me out earlier. The SHIELD I knew with Fury was gone and the whole Avengers team that I had grown accustomed to had been ripped from my hands.

And all because of some stupid decision I had made. I wasn’t usually the person begging and installing the false hope of such a foreign concept as peace, but caring about people brings delusions like that. Being with a saint like Steve pushed you to your own emotional limits; Tony was right. I had gone soft.

The second I let the door slam behind me, I felt something building in my chest. It felt real, not some made up thing I used in order to complete my missions by manipulating and deceiving others, but a real, horribly painful emotion. Each step I took brought another pile of it from the ashes where it used to lay and, before long, I was on the floor, my back sliding against one of the dusty walls surrounding the bare room.

At first, it was just one sob. Just one for losing the only home that I could remember.

The second was because I had tried, for once, to erase some of the red on my ledger and, hopefully, stop any from accumulating on those of the people I cared about. Every single time I tried to do something good, tried to pursue the thing I truly believed in because every single powered person was dangerous, and we were threats, my world crumbled apart.

The third was from my memories. I remembered Steve’s words, the build-up to the whole “civil war”, and the beautiful nights in the Avengers tower.

“You aren’t a monster. We aren’t inherently monsters, and only our actions dictate ourselves. We are not to be subjected to prosecution just because some idiots did some unjust things to our bodies, and we are not fault for the chaos it reigns, the actions completely out of our own control. It is only choices, the same as the ones humans commit, that are added to our ledger.”

I had sided with Tony because I knew that wasn’t true. If powered people were anything like me, the same I had been at first before Clint had rescued me, then there should be cause for rules and restrictions. They should either be put down the same way that Clint should have put me down, or should be taught the right way. Tony’s belief, at the least the ones I supported, didn’t require an enhanced to be killed or even hurt for that matter, but to be monitored more closely than a human’s. Hell, I was an “enhanced” and I was even scared of what gifted people could do to the world. What I could do.

I couldn’t count the sobs after that. I cried until only dried tears could leak out, and I continued even then. The stars twinkled innocently outside, maliciously gleaming at me knowing that I had lost everything. I was back to being that scared little girl, emotionless and cold without a single foundation and all my bridges burned.

Except I wasn’t. To hell with self-pity and crying. I wasn’t good with emotions and shit anyways, and maybe I missed everyone at the team and maybe I was even in love with the one who had practically told me to get the hell out of his life, but that didn’t mean I was going to stand around helplessly. The foundation of what all the Avengers agreed on was to protect people and if they were all going to fight around with no regards to forces that could be conspiring around them, I would fight for them. Just long enough for all of them to get their shit together.

Maybe they’d all even forgive you and be willing to give you more than one second of their day to hear you out.

Excitement and adrenaline bubbled in my chest, forcing out my own wallowing. It just wasn’t me to be crying, and the maximum self-pity I gave myself was a ripe one hour. That was far over.

Everyone knew that there was a new threat rising, but they were far too involved in their problem to face it. I had to crush it in the roots in the completely crazy, unpreferred team size: a table of one. HYDRA was rising once more, and they had a weapon that only I knew what was. It was an ancient myth about this object or something that was a portal to another dimension, and that that dimension held the key to unlocking a dangerous, horrible creature upon Earth. If I were able to get that weapon and store it in capable hands like those of the people I trusted (definitely not Tony when it came to completely weird screwed up mythical objects), they’d have to see what I was trying to do.

Steve would forgive me and I knew that if he did, well one step at a time. Get that object, prove that they needed to get over themselves, and the team would be united once more. After all, that’s all I wanted. I wanted the family we all knew we used to be and if anyone knew anything about Natasha Romanov, it was that she was loyal above all else, and I was absolutely loyal to the idea of us being a family.

I would protect that with my life.

 

Two weeks had passed as I searched day and night, tiring myself out in that cramped and absolutely terrible excuse of a structure. Chinese food had become my best friend, and I swapped around ID’s as fast as people did with every “update” and more “advanced” iPhone. I suppressed my feelings because goddamn that was the thing that made me the Black Widow and the top recruit of my class. I was never the best fighter or the best looker, but I was the best at suppressing my own emotions and deceit. After all, not everyone had a super serum that gave them a present of a six pack, insane strength, and a unlimited cash flow for punching bags.

Coulson’s SHIELD team had reached out to me after Daisy had noticed my recent trips through back portals in regards to keywords such as “HYDRA” and “deadly rocks.” Apparently, they were in the exact same position as I was, which only helped to speed up the process. Daisy’s ex-boyfriend (or whatever you could call that son of a bitch named Grant Ward) was their number one target for extermination as he was the new lead of a brutal and rebuilding branch of HYDRA. He would lead me right to that portal and I knew exactly where the hell he was.

Which led me to the point I was right now, a gun pointed right at my head. I could see Ward, his craziness and all, and I was surrounded by a bunch of his asshole soldiers with my hands tied above my head in only the most skilled knot I had ever seen. Well damn.

My comms unit was across the room, bloodied, but that part was over. Everything was going to work out the way that I had planned.

“You lost, Ward. There’s no getting around that.” I mocked him, but kept my gaze around the room. Sixteen enhanced people and Ward himself, who was more like a pain in the ass. Brutal, quick, skilled, but a pain for all he was worth. “Coulson picked up the Monolith with Skye and Hydra’s gem...well that’s gone.”

His fist collided with my face and blood immediately found its way to my mouth. Iron surrounded every taste, and I spit it in his face. Needless to say, he was more than a little mad.

Yet, he was sadistic and somehow managed to cackle in laughter afterwards. I had stolen the thing that HYDRA had absolutely needed to fulfill its long term goal and had taken out the other person in HYDRA’s leader equation. Steve would be so proud of you right now. Or would be pissed at you for risking yourself like that? Nah, he wouldn’t. He hates you.

Ward paced around the room, his laughter dying but the malicious and psychopathic glance in his eyes still there. I had seen many psychopaths in my life, but he was among one of the most psychopathic. And that was saying a lot.

“You see, I may have lost but I still have you,” he said with a pointed look. “And I know that if you could’ve got out of those ropes you already would have. Garett taught me a pretty nasty knot.

“And if I have you...well needless to say, I have leverage over the Avengers. Or maybe they won’t care about you.” He touched the bottom of my chin, and it took quite a sum of energy within me to keep myself from flinching. “You little traitor.”

I couldn’t help but flinch at that. It was a constant reminder of who I had been deemed, and the thing that I could never be rid of. There was no denying the fact that he was right; the only one who would care about my riddance would be Clint. I had been a burden for many of them, and my betrayal had only cemented that.

Still, I wasn’t about to give up. I was committed to do good in the world, at the expense of my friends or not. “Go to hell, Ward.”

“Already been there,” he chuckled, his face bloody from my fight with him earlier. I had needed to buy time and cover Skye (for the record, he was so completely trying to get her), which led to my eventual capture. “But who would’ve thought that the mighty Black Widow would be completely at my hands right now? Maybe they’ll feel bad for letting me hurt you.”

My stomach settled with dread, but I kept my poker face on. I just had to find an opening to escape or, at the very least, kill Ward and get my gut slashed out in a more honorable way. Damn Rogers for making me want that much.

No matter what, I knew that at least some of the Avengers would feel awful about my inevitable death (at this point so far. I was pretty skilled at planning ahead). The thought that they would feel something was a little heart-warming, but I didn’t have time for that. Forgiveness was my only mission and how the hell was I going to get that if I was face planked dead. I needed to buy time. Coulson would alert them with intel and…well, after that, it was all up for grabs.

“Or maybe I’ll just get the pleasure of having you here with me. Maybe I can even turn you against them.” His voice installed chills within me, and I knew what was coming next. My absolutely favorite part of missions gone wrong was here: interrogation or, in this case, torture. Yay.

But if he were to dangle me as bait for the Avengers, to just screw with them because that was all I was to Ward, that would mean he was taking the risk of letting them know his location. If I could give clues as to where we were...we could take him and his enhanced down, too. I just had to hang in for that long.

Ten days past and I was still waiting. I was curled up in a ball with tattered clothes and blood absolutely _everywhere_  but, yes, Natasha Romanov was still sticking to her cause and, if there was something she was, it was loyal.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Tell me if I should continue with this story since I got a lot on my plate and really need to learn how to prioritize.
> 
> Xoxo,  
> Kadecca


End file.
